I’m not a fan of the Monster line from Ducati. There, I said it. There is just something about the Monster models over the years that has failed to strike me as appealing, though I must say the latest crop of liquid-cooled Monsters has certainly been a step forward for me, visually.
I’m more of a fan of the Ducati Streetfigther lineup, and I still hope that Ducati has a new Streetfighter design somewhere on its design boards. Ideally, such a machine would have a Superquadro engine at its heart, and accordingly make big horsepower numbers that rip our eyeballs from our sockets.
The fate of the Streetfighter line remains to be seen though, and with each passing model year I expect to see the Streetfighter 848 finally leave the Italian company’s lineup. It would seem the Streetfighter is kaput as of the 2016 model year. -JB
As such, the Monster line could be Ducati’s only naked bike model, any year now. So, if time is really against us, and if the Monster really is to be the only naked bike from Ducati, I hope the future iterations take a lesson from this concept.
The concept here was inked by Simon Linot, for a design contest held by Ducati France. In it, you can see that Linot has put together an intriguing use of Ducati’s superbike engine in its venerable street bike model.
The Superquadro engine is perhaps not the best engine choice for the Ducati Monster, especially considered how poorly suited the models are for the race track, which means the Superquadro’s race-focused design would be brutal for low-speed street life.
There is after all a reason why Ducati is using its 821cc and 1200cc Testastretta 11° engines in the Monster lineup, currently. The 11° valve overlap on the updated Testastretta engine makes for a fairly controllable engine at slow city speeds, and thus is better suited for machines that will live in that environment.
This idea was perhaps the downfall of the Streetfighter models, especially the 1098 versions – which were a chore to ride below 25 mph. The Streetfighter 848 is more manageable than its large-displacement sibling, but the model is slowly aging.
As such, the time is coming when Ducati will have to decided whether to revamp the Streetfighter line, or finally let it die.
That all being said, the “Ducati 1199 Monster X” that we are looking at here is an interesting proposal. Certainly something worth chewing on, and hopefully it percolates some ideas in Bologna about reviving the Streetfighter model lineup.
Source: Racing Café
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